


Stand By Me

by fleaflofloyd



Category: Call the Midwife
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:40:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25397818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleaflofloyd/pseuds/fleaflofloyd
Summary: He tells her.She smiles kindly, warmly, but does not return the sentiment.He's not sure what he was expecting.Her walking away from him is not it.----------Cyril's POV. If you have not read my 'I never thought...' series, do so before reading this. It's imperative to your understanding of this. Maybe go reread it as well...Thanks to my lovely mutuals on twitter for their continuous inspirational words.----------
Relationships: Lucille Anderson/Valerie Dyer
Comments: 8
Kudos: 14





	Stand By Me

Cyril Robinson is coming up the stairs of Mrs Dyer's building when he hears it through the apartment door. 

Lucille singing. 

_"So darling, darling, stand...by me..."_

Kenny Lynch. 

Cyril has his records at home. It's one of his favourites. 

She's singing softly. 

Heartfelt. 

Significant in the mid-afternoon quiet. 

He stops and simply listens. 

Her voice is a little shaky, and he realises that she's been crying, alongside Nurse Dyer. 

Crying for her. 

For her friend's grief. 

For her loss. 

He's certain of it. 

She's often talked of her friend on their dates, with a warmth to her voice that conveyed Valerie's importance to her. There's a relaxation that happens to her shoulders, something he's yet to see occur when other members of Nonnatus House are mentioned. Only talk of her family back in Jamaica has elicited the same response from her. 

He's deliberately brought Valerie up on occasion, in an effort to get Lucille to open up to him. She usually did when recounting a story of Valerie's, or something she'd said or done. The two of them seemed to share quite a bit with each other, Lucille always with a new piece of information each time he saw her. 

Always with a story or comment. 

It was... 

Well, it was something, he supposes. 

Lucille cares deeply for her friend.

She cares very deeply for people in general. 

He's seen it today. Her care of Mrs Dyer has tugged at his heart, made him see her in a more rounded way. In a way that slots a new puzzle piece in. 

Her attention had gone from Mrs Dyer to her younger kin, lingering on Valerie, while they all waited. While they all tried to lighten the load. While they all wished for a painless last journey for Mrs Dyer. 

He's not sure if Nurse Dyer being away at the time is a kindness or a cruelty. 

He sighs at the memory. 

Lucille is still singing, her voice catching over the chorus towards the end of the song. Pitchy. The sorrow in her tone is... 

There's no mistaking it. 

Mrs Dyer's death has hurt her, via her connection to Valerie. She's hurting because of that connection. He'd watched her watch Valerie, a deep sense of worry set into her shoulders. He'd seen them silently communicating with one another, Lucille trying to brighten her face, look a little less strained. Look a little lighter, in the hope that Nurse Dyer would be comforted by the show of strength. 

That she would be comforted by Lucille. 

He'd been an intruder to it, really. They've built up their own silent language in their work; communicated without words in a way that was instinctual, in a way that needed to be automatic. Because he knows that others lives -- especially babies lives -- depended on them being in synchrony. 

It reminds him of an engine with an adequate supply of oil, firing efficiently. Correctly. 

That's what they'd been today. 

Except for that--

Except for that one moment.

He'd walked slow enough down to the phone box, to give Nurse Dyer some time to grieve, for it to start spinning in his mind. 

They'd tucked the hot water bottle in between the blankets for Mrs Dyer, and Valerie had reached for something. He'd thought at the time that the answer had been Mrs Dyer's left hand, but now, with time and consideration, Nurse Dyer's reaction was puzzling him.

She'd looked taken back. Like she'd expected something and had gotten the complete opposite. Like she'd expected something and had lost out. 

Like something else was going on with her. 

Up until then, they'd been firing efficiently. 

Lucille has stopped singing now, but she's humming quietly, some sweet melody meant to comfort her friend. 

Meant for her ears only. 

He can't help but hear the not so silent communication of care, of comfort, of love, that passes between them. 

He's an intruder, after all. 

\---

He rides too fast on the way home, the chilly November air biting at his face. 

The ice cream had melted between them, the remnants of it and the chocolate flake stained on Lucille's uniform and Valerie's cape. 

It was a sign of how consumed they'd been. Valerie in her grief and Lucille in her worry for her. 

Another thing between them. 

The knowledge of it stings, just as much as the wind. 

\---

He goes to the funeral. 

Sees the way they gravitate around each other. Lucille instinctively stays close to the brunette, and Valerie appears to gain strength from her, even though her mother and family are in close proximity. 

There are small touches between them. A hand on a lower back, lingering. Fingers coming up to grab a stray hair from an arm. A comforting squeeze of a shoulder. 

He sees Lucille nod her encouragement when Valerie seeks her out from the pulpit, paused in her eulogy, emotions close to the surface. 

He thinks of an anchor, steadying the ship in a storm, and knows for certain Lucille is that for Nurse Dyer. 

He loves her more for it. 

He loves her. 

And she... 

Well, he simply does not know how she feels about him. 

The night comes, and it occurs to him that he hopes Lucille loves him in the dedicated way she loves Valerie. 

The thought unsettles him the more it stays on his mind. 

\---

He tells her. 

She smiles kindly, warmly, but does not return the sentiment. 

He's not sure what he was expecting. 

Her walking away from him is not it. 

\---

Then, two weeks worth of wondering, turning the thought over in his mind, telling himself it's nothing, comes to a jarring halt. 

The fireworks are booming, fizzing overhead, lighting up the sky as the fire roars between him and them. 

Lucille and Valerie are lost in each other's eyes. 

It runs deeper than he--

_"She told me I looked too good for bingo...isn't she lovely?"_

Lucille's eyes had lit up, bright and brilliant, searing themselves into his memory as they'd walked home that night. 

It was Valerie. It was the subject of her. 

It was the frequency with which Lucille's eyes sparkled for the brunette. 

It wasn't just Lucille's shoulders that relaxed in the moment. It was her whole body, her whole demeanour. Her face changed. The tone of her voice infinitely warmed. Words about Valerie eased themselves away from Lucille's tongue like a symphony.

Her whole heart accompanies them. Her whole body expresses her depth of feeling for--

They're a well-oiled engine. 

Firing efficiently. 

An anchor mooring the ship in choppy waters. 

Because of that love. 

Lucille loves Valerie in a way that's absolute, succinct. Mrs Dyer's death has simply brought it forward, brought it into the light from the shadows.

Cyril knows they'll be no room for her to love him. 

It hurts. 

It hurts because Lucille will never look at him like that. Will never love him like that. Never see him the way she's seeing Valerie now. 

Like the rest of the world has disappeared. Like nothing else exists.

He loves her that way. 

All at once, the fireworks stop, the colours in the sky disappearing. 

He watches them blink, the spell broken. Both of them turn their heads toward the fire. Nurse Dyer looks especially startled, glancing quickly back at Lucille with... 

There's something sad about the look, heartbreaking even.

_Longing._

Cyril looks away then, down at the flames, at the word coming to mind. 

Nurse Dyer knows.

She knows she loves Lucille. 

She loves Lucille. 

He remembers her hand reaching for something and the look on her face. 

She'd known then too. 

She'd reached for Lucille. 

And she'd missed. 

It's not the way he thought it was. He'd imagined it as something unspoken, something simply felt and not observed. Something neither of them knew, or acknowledged.

It breaks his heart.

Is this who Nurse Dyer is? Is she one of those people Pastor Brown used to condemn back home? A heathen, hiding among them?

He shakes his head and thinks of _John 8:7_.

_He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her._

At her.

At Valerie.

He has sinned. He can not judge. He will not judge Valerie, or Lucille, for this.

Not for love.

It leaves him with a decision to make.

\---

He sits on the choice of whether to tell Lucille or not. 

Every engine he works on reminds him of their bond. Reminds him of his meandering. 

Still... 

They have a date on Thursday. 

He'll tell her then. 

\---

He gets swept up in work on the other side of town, a blocked oil pump causing him grief, and doesn't return home until the sky is dark and the rain has set in. 

His landlord Mr Howard corners him on the apartment stairs just as he's dreaming of a hot shower. 

"Cyril, is your girl alright?" 

His heart drops into his gut at the serious look on his friends face. "Why--what happened?" 

"That brunette midwife was hit by a car last night--Mrs Castry said Lucille was there, that she--" 

It takes a second for his mind to catch up. 

"Is she okay? Is Valerie okay?" 

"They got her to St Cuthbert's, but Mrs Castry heard it was bad, real bad."

His goggles slip out of his hand and clang on the wooden stairs. He bends to pick them up. 

He should've told Lucille. He should've--

"I should..." His mind trips over what he needs to do as he moves down a step. 

"Son, you need to get out of your wet clothes--" he lifts a hand and squeezes Cyril's shoulder, "--and then you can call Nonnatus. It won't do to go back out in that. Come on." 

\---

The shower does not warm him. 

He phones Nonnatus. 

Speaks with Sister Hilda. 

The news is not good. 

Valerie is badly hurt. 

Valerie is badly hurt, and he should've said something.

Should've told Lucille he'd seen them that night.

That he knew. 

He'd seen their love blazing brighter than that bonfire and now... 

Now Lucille might lose that. 

Might lose Valerie. 

He barely makes it to the bathroom before throwing up his lunch. 

\---

He's back in the local hall, playing bingo with Lucille, her friends and Nurse Dyer's grandmother, intently listening as the numbers are read out. 

He's only got one to get before he wins.

Except that Lucille is singing softly beside him, the words of Kenny Lynch -- of Ben E. King -- easing from her lips in a sweet distraction. 

He looks at her to find she's looking at Valerie. 

They're looking at each other warmly, lovingly. Openly. 

"You can't win, young man," a voice says, and he turns his eyes in the direction of it, finding Elsie Dyer peering back at him, healthy as she'd once been. 

"If I hang in and wait I can."

Elsie looks between Valerie and Lucille. She's still singing sweetly, meaningfully. They're still holding each other's gaze, lost to all else, but especially to him. 

"It's out of your hands." 

He blinks awake in the dark, Mrs Dyer's words repeating in his head, sticking in his chest. 

He pulls the blankets off, kneels down beside his bed, and prays. 

\---

He goes back across town to finish his work, the pump filling correctly now that he's cleaned it. 

The damage to the engine is something he'll have to work with. 

What's done is done. 

\---

He goes home and changes. 

His trip to Nonnatus takes him past the corner of Davis and Hendricks. Nurse Dyer's bike is leaning up against a brick wall, the front wheel and handlebars bent beyond use. 

Someone beeps their horn behind him, and he has to move on. 

He has to move forward. 

He needs to talk to Lucille. 

He needs to--

To tell her. 

\---

Sister Frances looks exhausted in the front doorway, her youthful eagerness gone. 

"Lucille is sleeping--I don't think she can make your date tonight. She's been holding vigil overnight with Valerie and is...if it were a better time, I would invite you in, but she needs the rest. She's running on empty."

What he has to say can't wait, but neither can he barge his way past her into this sacred house. 

"Of course, Sister. Has there been any improvement with Nurse Dyer? I've been worried sick since I heard." 

She sighs sadly, looking especially grief-stricken. "I'm afraid she's still in a bad way. We're praying for her recovery, but..." 

She shakes her head and looks down. 

"I'll continue to keep her in my prayers," he tells her, not sure what else he can say. 

Sister Frances looks up, sadness written all over her face. "She's always been so kind...I don't understand any of this."

Cyril doesn't either.

\--

He sits on the steps of Nonnatus long after Sister Frances has shut the door, feeling the weight of his choices bear down on him. 

The sky is starting to dim when Nurse Franklin appears on her bike, riding towards him in the rapidly cooling air. 

She sits down beside him, placing her nursing kit on the step below. 

"Has there been any change?"

He exhales and shakes his head. Watches a car go by. 

She's silent beside him for a long moment. 

Cyril suspects her joining him on the steps means she has something to say, so he waits for it in the quiet. 

"There are things in this world that happen without reason, without our say in them. Terrible things..."

She sniffles softly. 

"On the other hand, there are wonderful things too. They take us by surprise sometimes. Perhaps the possibility of them hasn't even occurred to us yet."

It's deliberately vague; ostensibly about anything, but really only about one scenario: 

Lucille and Valerie in love. 

Nurse Franklin knows.

He looks at her then. She looks up at him, her eyes shining with unshed tears. 

Neither of them can talk about it. To do so is a betrayal of their friends. They can't speak of it here, out in the open either. 

Cyril pulls out his handkerchief and hands it to her. Thinks about what to say for a moment, to convey his understanding, as she pats at her eyes. 

He has it. 

"Do you know much about car engines, Nurse Franklin?" 

"Not a smidgen." She gives him a semblance of a smile. 

"Well... it's possible to inadvertently damage the components of one if you don't supply it with enough lubrication--enough oil. There's a little tube in the bottom of the sump called a pickup line, it sends the oil upwards through the oil pump and has a strainer covering it so no large particles get where they shouldn't be. It gets clogged after a while..."

He drifts off, despite knowing what he needs to say. 

Nurse Franklin is waiting for him to continue, keenly aware there's more to be said.

"What I'm trying to say is...I'm that clogged up strainer, not letting the oil get to the engine. Not in the way it needs to." 

He watches the comprehension appear in her blue eyes. 

"Cyril..." 

He smiles sadly. "It's okay...I've been avoiding the signs for a while now, hoping I was mistaken, but...sometimes wonderful things happen and we have to let them. Even if they're not for us." 

His throat is tightening, the pent up emotion springing forth. 

If Lucille doesn't get a chance to know that wonderful thing, he will be to blame. 

He swallows the lump in his throat and asks quickly, "When do think I can catch her tomorrow?"

"She should be back by mid-morning, if..." 

Nothing happens. 

If Valerie keeps fighting. 

"I'll stop by then." 

He stands, picking up Nurse Franklin's kit for her. She follows him up, takes it from him, and moves to give back his handkerchief. 

"Keep it, Nurse. Lord knows I need a good deed right now." 

She nods, tucking it into her uniform pocket, before lifting her hand to squeeze his arm. 

"A wonderful thing is heading your way too, Cyril. Have faith in that."

She steps in to kiss him on the cheek. 

"Be safe on the way home."

He says he will, and follows through with it, easing the bike back through Poplar, blinking back his tears. 

\---

There's snow on the streets the next morning. 

It will not stop him. 

Today is the day he breaks up with Lucille. 

\---

The devastation over Valerie's ill health is radiating from her, Cyril almost losing his resolve in the face of it. 

She says she'll marry him. 

It's all he's wanted since he first laid eyes on her. 

_Do the right thing_ , he tells himself. 

"Lucille, we could spend a whole lifetime together, and you still would never look at me the way you looked at her that night. The way you always have." 

She fights it briefly, but his words ring true. 

He loses another handkerchief in the process. 

\---

The weight lifts from his chest, then all at once it's pressing tighter, Sister Julienne's haunted eyes conveying the new truth. 

\---

He flies through Poplar, willing his motorbike to go faster, to get them there faster. 

_Not now, Valerie._

_Not when she's this close._

\---

Lucille runs. 

He runs too, close behind. 

The news is heartbreaking, and he won't ever forget the way the air sucks itself out of his lungs upon hearing it. 

\---

He politely leaves Valerie's aunts to themselves, and walks the hallways of the hospital, up and down stairways, travelling in the lift Lucille had been stuck in. 

Round and round and through again, his feet hurting by the time he thinks to stop, to stop this aimlessness. 

He needs to pray. 

He finds the hospital chapel, the door scraping on the floor as he pushes it open. There are two separate groups in there already, seeking solace in the stagnant air. 

He steps in quietly, settling himself away from them on the pew closest to the door. 

He looks up at the crucifix and clasps his hands together. 

_Please._

_Please not now._

_Please._

He stays there for a long time, the place emptying out, all but begging the Lord for Valerie's life not to be taken, for Lucille's love to stay with her.

\---

He manages to find a nurse who knows of Lucille, who's willing to let him use the break room to make three cups of coffee. 

"I didn't know if either of you wanted sugar or milk, so..." 

"You got any brandy instead?" Flo asks, taking her cup anyway. 

He deals with their wariness of him, of the likelihood of them not knowing someone like him, by asking about Valerie. 

Their tales of her as a young girl come quickly and easily. They talk of how proud her parents were when she joined the army, of how dear Elsie regarded her.

Their stories are interspersed with bouts of tears, and he waits quietly while looking down the hallway, affording them a little privacy. 

"I've just given my two good handkerchiefs away, so I don't have one to offer..." 

Edie chuckles in her tears. "Thanks anyway. Where was you when we was tryin' to find Val a man?" 

Cyril smiles kindly, while his heart aches at the comment. 

What a lonely life Valerie must've had. 

\---

He dreams of that bingo game and Elsie Dyer, the two of them the only ones at the table. 

"It's still out of your hands," she says. 

"She doesn't deserve this," he counters, suddenly angry. "It was a stupid accident--a lapse in judgement and she..." 

Elsie lifts her hands and takes hold of his, squeezing gently. 

"It was a terrible thing, but you need to remember the wonderful things Valerie gave the world. The countless babies she helped along their way. The love she gave to me and our family, and to Lucille and their friends. The care and compassion the Poplar people got from her. Those wonderful things are what you need to focus on. Not the terrible thing that was beyond your, or Lucille's, or Valerie's control."

"It isn't fair." 

She smiles sadly. "Life would mean nothing if it were fair all the time."

He awakens, feeling the remnants of tears on his cheeks. He wipes at them and checks the time. 

_4:47 am._

Christmas morning has arrived. 

\---

There's a flurry of motion an hour later, when multiple nurses rush past him, heading through the white hospital doors where he knows Valerie and Lucille are. 

Cyril senses a change and wakes Valerie's aunts.

A few minutes later, Lucille is walking through the doors, shellshocked but with a familiar light in her eyes. 

"Her circulation has picked up--she's responding to...she's getting better." 

Edie and Flo latch onto Lucille, taking her into their arms as their collective relief overwhelms them. Their sobs echo off the hallway walls, and it's the greatest sound Cyril has ever heard. 

He steps to them and sets a hand on the middle of Lucille's back, bending down to kiss her hair. 

She looks up at him through her tears, and mouths a _thank you_ to him. 

He smiles, knowing that this is the end for them. 

\---

He goes home. 

Puts the 45 on the dansette and sets the needle. 

The familiar bass breaks through the silence of his apartment, Kenny Lynch's dulcet tones following a moment later. 

Cyril sits down in the armchair beside the record player and looks at the Christmas tree across the room. 

Lucille's present is still there, by itself. Wrapped impossibly neat, the best he's ever achieved. 

A Stadium deluxe vistette eye shield, for his bike. 

So the wind won't bother her eyes anymore. 

Kenny starts to sing about not shedding tears, and it's like a switch. 

Cyril breaks down as the song flows on, sobbing for the loss of Lucille, for the life they could've had. 

He'll have to stand by himself now. 

\---

He sees her one last time before the year is finished, snow sprinkled in his doorway, shivering and starting to cry. 

It hurts to see her, but he doesn't let it show. 

"She woke up, Cyril--she's...she woke up."

She steps forward, hands reaching for him hesitantly. He immediately hugs her to him, her hands gripping the back of his shirt as the warmth permeates. 

"I'm so glad for you," he tells her. "For both of you."

And he is. 

The hurt he feels pales in comparison to his happiness for them. 

Valerie will get better, and they'll be okay. 

He'll be okay too, with time. 

It's a wonderful thing. 

\----------

For Naya.

**Author's Note:**

> Kenny Lynch was one of the first black pop stars in the U.K, born to a Barbadian father and a mixed-race mother of British and Jamaican heritage. His cover of Ben E. King's 'Stand By Me' was released in 1964, peaking at 39 on the U.K charts. If you have yet to hear it, go hunt it down because I think it's just as good as Mr King's juggernaut.


End file.
